Airport workers seek better pay and benefits

As a baggage runner and low-level security official, Maria Romero has worked for three years in the army of blue-collar functionaries who help keep the airlines operating at Los Angeles International Airport.

The 41-year-old mother of three says she earns $11.25 an hour, searching aircraft cabins and lugging passenger bags from screening checkpoints to ticket counters at the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

But Romero can’t afford health insurance, and like many of the other ID checkers and aircraft cabin searchers at LAX, she says she has not been formally trained in emergency procedures or in how to recognize suspicious items and fake driver’s licenses.

Romero is one of thousands of workers at LAX seeking more pay, health benefits and training from contractors who supply the airlines with janitors, security workers, baggage runners, aircraft cabin cleaners and attendants for passengers with disabilities.

The typical airline service worker makes about $10.50 an hour -- not quite $22,000 a year.

Since a daylong strike before Labor Day, negotiations have continued between the contractors and Service Employees International Union Local 1877, which represents about 2,400 airline service workers at LAX.

Union leaders acknowledge that they are taking a significant risk by pressing their demands during a severe economic downturn in the airline industry. But they are optimistic about their ability to win concessions.

So far, the union has received support from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, members of the City Council and the city’s Airport Commission, which is weighing training improvements and performance standards for airport workers and contractors.

Airport officials and City Council members are concerned about the airport’s poor showing in consumer satisfaction surveys. They also say that if billions of dollars are going to be spent modernizing LAX, they want a quality labor force.

“We are hopeful,” said Brian Rudiger, director of the SEIU’s airport division. “These workers have shown how important they are and how they are willing to take strong action.”

SEIU leaders had threatened to expand the Aug. 28 walkout through the holiday weekend, but Villaraigosa brokered a cooling-off period the next day and contract talks resumed the next week.

“There has been no substantive movement yet,” Rudiger said.

Airline analysts, airline officials and local business leaders say the SEIU’s timing could not be worse. By the end of the year, according to estimates by the Air Transport Assn., the airlines’ trade organization, carriers will cut up to 36,000 jobs and lose $7 billion to $10 billion.

At one time, virtually all airport service jobs were in-house positions with the airlines, which offered better pay and benefits.

But carriers have outsourced those jobs because of the economic effect of 9/11 on air travel, declining revenue and cost-cutting over the years.

“The union is not in the greatest bargaining position,” said Jack Keady, an aviation consultant based in Playa del Rey. “The airlines are ill equipped to pay higher wages these days, plus these service positions are easily filled. They don’t require a unique skill, and the airlines can use their own employees or hire replacements.”

Keady said, however, that airline service workers enjoy considerable political support from Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles City Council.

“The mayor has urged the airlines, the contractors and the union to hammer out a fair deal that recognizes the difficult economic times for the airlines and the difficult economic times for airline service workers,” said Julie Gutman, Villaraigosa’s labor advisor.

An important issue for the SEIU is the amount of training received by attendants who help people with disabilities and security workers, who check IDs, guard terminal doors and search aircraft cabins for suspicious items.

A survey of airline service workers by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a nonprofit research organization, indicates that about 25% of security workers have received training for cabin searches, fewer than 20% have received formal instruction in spotting fake IDs and only 10% have been trained in emergency and evacuation procedures.

“It’s a heavy responsibility for us,” said Jorge Herrera, a security worker. “The training isn’t enough. We aren’t sure we are doing the right things for our safety and the passenger’s safety.”

Wheelchair attendants say they can receive up to eight hours of instruction via videotape and are supposed to be accompanied on the job for a few weeks by an experienced attendant.

But the alliance survey found that a third of wheelchair attendants said they have seen passengers with disabilities being endangered because of equipment problems or inadequate training.

“At the airport I’ve felt like I was being handled like a sack of potatoes,” said Lillibeth Navarro, who uses a wheelchair and is executive director of Communities Actively Living Independent and Free, a nonprofit organization. “The workers have little understanding of people with special needs.”

Such concerns have prompted the Trade, Commerce and Tourism Committee of the Los Angeles City Council to study training improvements and the possibility of raising the city’s living wage requirements.

“If the airlines are charging $25 for a piece of baggage, we can certainly afford to give these workers a decent wage,” said Councilwoman Janice Hahn, committee chairwoman. “I don’t believe increasing the living wage will break anyone.”

Workers complain that the city’s living wage law does not provide enough money for them or their employers to buy adequate health insurance.

In Los Angeles, the living wage for workers whose employers provide health insurance is $9.39 per hour, a figure adjusted for inflation. For workers who are not provided health insurance, there is an upward adjustment of $1.25 per hour, for a total of $10.64.

The $1.25 wage differential, which is not adjusted for inflation, is designed to encourage employers to provide health insurance if they don’t already offer such plans.

Gary Toebben, president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, cautioned that new training requirements and an increase in the living wage could send the wrong message to the airlines.

“The industry is reeling with losses,” Toebben said. “Now we are going to ask them to pay for the renovation of LAX [through landing fees] and add wage and training mandates on top of that. It does not indicate a sensitivity on the part of the city to the plight of the airlines.”

Union leaders contend that the airline industry should support their demands because it has received at least $8.47 billion in local, state and federal subsidies since 9/11, which devastated the airlines financially.

According to a 2008 study by the Alliance for a New Economy, the government assistance includes cash grants, loan guarantees, war risk insurance, bailouts of pension plans, bond financing for airport projects and exemptions from sales taxes on jet fuel.

If the demands of the workers are met, union leaders say, it would add about 25 cents to the price of an airline ticket.

Toebben disputed the idea that the airlines somehow owe service workers better wages and benefits because they have received billions of dollars in assistance.

“This country needed the airlines to continue flying after 9/11,” Toebben said. “My gosh, look at what the airlines had to install -- all the security hardware and devices. They’ve only recovered a small portion of their expenses. To say they have made money off the government after 9/11 is absolutely incorrect.”

--

dan.weikel@latimes.com